Claims of racism made after Mystic Valley Charter School students punished for hair extensions

Friday

May 12, 2017 at 1:33 PMMay 12, 2017 at 2:34 PM

The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School is under scrutiny after punishing two African American students for wearing braided hair extensions.

Ethan Hartley ehartley@wickedlocal.com @MirandaWillson5 ‏

The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School is facing scrutiny after punishing two African American students who attended the school wearing braided hair extensions.

Colleen Cook, adopted mother of twins Mya and Deanna – both 15-year-old African American students who attend the Malden-based charter school – claims that the school’s decision to levy punitive measures due to their hair extensions has racial implications, and that the school’s rules on dress code and appearance disproportionately affects black students.

Cook said in an interview with the Boston Globe that her daughters, after refusing to take out their hair extensions, are serving before and after-school detention and have been banned from both afterschool sports and the upcoming prom.

According to the Mystic Valley Charter 2016/17 Parent/Student Handbook, the rules for how students may wear their hair are as follows:

"Students must keep their hair neat and out of their eyes. Students may not wear drastic or unnatural hair colors or styles such as shaved lines or shaved sides or have a hairstyle that could be distracting to other students (extra-long hair or hair more than two inch in thickness or height is not allowed). This means no coloring, dying, lightening (sun-in) or streaking of any sort. Hair extensions are not allowed."

Although the rulebook appears to be straightforward, Cook claimed her daughters had worn these types of braided extensions in the past and yet "never encountered objections from the school."

Cook has reached out to the NAACP and the Massachusetts Anti-Defamation League for help, and the latter group was apparently meeting with officials from the school on Friday, according to Cook.

Cook has asserted that her daughters’ decision to wear the extensions was an expression of pride for their heritage, and that the style shouldn’t be included alongside the school’s policy regarding other restricted expressions of style that encompass a much broader population of students, such as the prohibition of tattoos, facial hair, makeup and nail polish.

"I am deeply troubled by reports of black girls being disciplined for how they choose to wear their hair," the post reads. "Too often, school policies like dress codes – both in their design and their enforcement – are disproportionately punitive toward children of color."

Also on Friday the Boston-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice sent a letter to the school in response to what they deemed a “discriminatory” policy.

The LCCREJ pointed out that, unlike the jewelry and nail polish prohibited in the school's code, braids and extensions are worn primarily by African-American and Afro-Caribbean students, which can raise concerns of discriminatory treatment.

“It is hard to understand how braiding, a deep-rooted cultural practice of people of African descent, can be put in the same category as the 'drastic and unnatural hair colors' the school's code prohibits as 'distracting,'" the LCCREJ said in a statement. “Denying young black women their opportunity to express their cultural identity will not make the school safer, more orderly, or less 'distracting.' It will diminish the students, and diminish their ranks.

The school sent out a press release on Friday responding to the incident that categorically defended its actions.

"The rules on attire and appearance, which apply to all children and have been consistently enforced, are designed to support this philosophy. They are designed to permit students to focus their attentions on academics and on those aspects of their personalities that are truly important," it reads.

"The specific prohibition on hair extensions, which are expensive and could serve as a differentiating factor between students from dissimilar socioeconomic backgrounds, is consistent with our desire to create such an educational environment, one that celebrates all that our students have in common and minimizes material differences and distractions. Any suggestion that it is based on anything else is simply wrong," the statement continues.